OTTAWA – The only western Canadian in the federal Liberal leadership race called Monday for an end to all oilsands pipeline projects to the British Columbia coast as part of a plan to move away from a “stone age” approach to energy development.

Former B.C. environment minister Joyce Murray also said she favours the legalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana, supports a national carbon tax, and endorses co-operation between “progressive” parties at the riding level to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2015.

And Murray vowed that if she becomes prime minister, a minimum of 40 per cent of her cabinet, and the same percentage of appointees to federal boards, agencies and commissions, would be women.

Murray outlined her views on those issues as she launched her candidacy Monday to be Canada’s next Liberal leader.

Related

The oilsands is “an important industry and one of the things that’s important about it is that it provides the wealth to transition out of the Stone Age, to transition to an era where we have energy efficiency and green energy,” she told a news conference here.

Asked if she viewed the oilsands as a “Stone Age” industry, she replied: “We need to shift away from carbon resources that are creating harm in the atmosphere and creating risk and threat to the future, to our kids and their kids.”

Alberta-to-B.C. oilsands pipelines promise to be one of the wedge issues in the nascent Liberal leadership contest, which officially began last week and ends in April.

The campaign’s first major event is a debate in Vancouver on Jan. 20, and the contest will include candidates with divergent views on the issue.

“Those pipelines would be a massive multi-billion-dolllar investment (in) an infrastructure that is locking us into a business model that is obsolete,” she said.

“And that business model is one in which the exploration and production and export of oil and bitumen is subsidized by the federal government. And that’s not sustainable, that has to change.”

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said the oil and gas industry has access to tax incentives, as other industrial sectors do, but does not receive subsidies. The industry has also contributed $21 billion in taxes and royalties in 2011, according to CAPP.

But Environment Minister Peter Kent used the same term Murray did when he said in June that the government was phasing out favourable tax treatment for the oil and gas industry.

“Canada is committed to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies,” Kent told the House of Commons.

Another potentially controversial Murray position is her call that parties in Tory-held ridings select their own candidates, then hold a “run-off” nomination to choose a single rival to the Conservative incumbent.

Murray, 58, is a former B.C. environment minister and founder, with her husband, of a reforestation firm. She was born in South Africa and came to Canada as a child.

She will be entering the contest at a time when the party’s critics are accusing the Liberals of having an anti-Alberta, and perhaps even anti-western-Canada, bias.

Last week Ottawa Liberal MP David McGuinty had to resign his post as natural resources critic after saying that Alberta MPs should seek political office in their home province if they weren’t prepared to take a national perspective on environmental issues.

The resulting furore, exacerbated by a surprisingly competitive byelection campaign in Calgary that concluded Monday, got louder after it was revealed that Trudeau made disparaging comments about politicians from Alberta in a 2010 interview.

Murray was the B.C. environment minister under former Liberal premier Gordon Campbell from 2001 to 2004. She lost her provincial seat in 2005, sought and lost a federal seat in New Westminster-Coquitlam in 2006, then won the federal riding of Vancouver Quadra in a 2008 byelection.

She held on to it in the subsequent general election that year, and took it again in 2011 even though the Liberals plunged to third-party status.

The Liberals have historically tried to alternate between leaders from Quebec and the rest of Canada. Murray portrayed that tradition as one in which the rest-of-Canada leader was necessarily from Ontario, even though former leader John Turner spent part of his childhood in B.C. and represented Murray’s riding of Vancouver Quadra when he was leader in the 1980s.

Murray said she’ll argue that it’s the West’s turn to take the party’s reins.

She called McGuinty’s and Trudeau’s comments “regrettable” and said they “showed a lack of understanding of another region” but noted that both men apologized.

The Liberal race promises to be a crowded competition to lead Canada’s third-place party. Other announced or expected candidates include Toronto lawyer Deborah Coyne and former astronaut and Montreal MP Marc Garneau.